President Obama's Weirdest New Taxes
By CHRIS GOOD
President Obama has plenty of big taxes in his budget proposal.
To achieve $1.8 trillion in new revenue, the president suggested a few of the policies he's raised while battling Republicans over the past four years: taxing higher incomes by capping itemized tax deductions, rolling back domestic-production credits for oil companies, instituting the "Buffett Rule" of a 30 percent minimum tax rate for people making over $1 million in a year, and taxing investment managers' "carried interest" profits as regular income top the list.
But the tax code is a jungle of odd rules, and the penny-pinching side of Obama's budget raises some new taxes (or closes some "loopholes") that might not readily occur to most taxpayers filling out run-of-the-mill 1040s this weekend.
As laid out this week by the Treasury Department in its "green book," a massive spiral-bound document that explains tax changes in the White House budget proposal - it is pale green, and 246 pages - here are some quirky maneuvers the president suggests to offset spending and keep the deficit just a bit lower:
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